Free Ancestors by William Maxwell

hundred yards off, sheltered by a large tree. I blamed them for leaving me thus exposed to the ravening beasts around.”
    He soon had another and more substantial reason to blame them. In climbing the mountain that morning, Stone’s horse lost a shoe, and went lame. He asked the backwoodsman to let him ride his pack horse and put the pack on Stone’s. The request was refused. Stone trotted after his horse, until he was overcome by weariness. The other two rode off, leaving him alone in the wilderness. Taking his time and driving the horse in front of him, he arrived at a settlement, where he was kindly received and rested several days and then he proceeded to Shiloh, where he found many old friends and fellow students lately come home from North Carolina. With one of them Stone made an agreement to travel and preach “through all the settlements of Cumberland.” This didn’t take very long, for the settlements were all within a few miles of Nashville, which was at that time a village. The two young men went on to Kentucky, and there continued their itinerant preaching until winter set in. The united congregations at Cane Ridge and Concord, in Bourbon County,were at that time vacant, and Stone preached to them. He was invited to settle. Though he was young, his preaching was correct and interesting. And he himself was very much liked. He endeavored to preach the truth as he found it in the Bible, and seldom made any direct allusion to or attack on the sentiments or doctrines of those who differed from him. When he was not preaching he applied himself closely to reading and study. Within a few months he had added fifty members to the congregation at Concord and thirty at Cane Ridge, and he concluded that it was better to stay in one place than to exhort here and there, among strangers.
    In the fall of 1798 a call from his two congregations was presented to him through the Presbytery of Transylvania, and he accepted, knowing that the Presbytery would have to pass on his suitability, and also would require him to agree to the Westminster Confession of Faith as the system of doctrines taught in the Bible. The Westminster Confession is the official creed of the Church of Scotland and, with some changes, of most Presbyterian churches and also of Congregationalists. It is the work of an assembly of divines, examined and approved in 1647 by the General Assembly of Scotland, and ratified by Act of Parliament in 1649. It begins in grandeur, as one would expect of a serious prose work of the mid-17th century. “There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body parts or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, Almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute …” But after a few pages the harsh climate, the mists, and the dampness of Calvinism begin to pervade both the thinking and the language. “All those whom God hath predestined into life, and those only, he is pleased in his appointed and accepted time effectually to call by his word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature … Others not elected, although they may be called by theministry of the word, and may have some common operation of the spirit; yet they truly never come to Christ, and therefore cannot be saved: much less can men not possessing the Christian religion, be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the laws of that religion they do possess, and to assert and maintain, that they may, is very pernicious and to be detested.”
    Stone began to study the Confession carefully, and, as usual he stumbled at the doctrine of the Trinity. Doubts also arose in his mind on the doctrines of election, reprobation, and predestination. “I had before this time learned from my superiors the way of divesting those doctrines of their hard, repulsive features,